I Am Not Your Enemy

This episode I do something I have never done in the entire history of the show. I just interview someone. No story. I interview Michael McRay to shed some light and hope on our current political divide. He’s a Nashville-based author of the new book I Am Not Your Enemy: Stories to Transform a Divided World. He’s a story-practitioner using the power of personal stories to heal harm, make meaning, and create connection. He works most often with the global empathy nonprofit organization Narrative 4 and earne his master’s degree in Belfast, Northern Ireland, studying conflict resolution and reconciliation.

Our conversation starts with the political divide in America, but ends up in a much more intimate place. We’ll learn about the scale of sectarian danger, a scale to determine the escalation of violence that can occur based on sectarianism, a helpful tool called the PIN model for conflict resolution, and here a couple stories of disparate people connecting in deeply human ways.

Scale of Sectarian Danger (from Moving Beyond Sectarianism: Religion, Conflict and Reconciliation in Northern Ireland)

Escalation by words and actions

We are different, we behave differently

We are right.

We are right and you are wrong

You are a less adequate version of what we are

You are not what you say you are

We are in fact what you say you are

What you are doing is evil

You are so wrong that you forfeit ordinary rights

You are less than human

You are evil

You are demonic

PIN diagram

You can learn more about the story exchanges Michael refers to in this episode at: https://narrative4.com/

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